Personal Computers (PCs) and televisions have traditionally occupied different realms of people's family lives. A PC has been traditionally used by an individual for receiving e-mails and browsing the Internet, or for work and research purposes. A television, on the other hand, has been placed at the center of various family activities, around which family members can gather and enjoy entertainment or watch news reports together. The two devices also require different levels of skills to enjoy. A PC requires more computer-related knowledge, and accordingly, its user group is not as broad as that of the television.
With the advancement of the technology and shifts in the users' behaviors, a PC and other consumer products, such as a television, stereo, DVD player, and telephone, have began to share more and more functions and characteristics. For example, many PCs can now play DVDs, and some televisions and settop boxes can possess as much computer power as a standard PC.
The integration of a phone and a television has also been explored. For example, video conference technology has been developed, combining the large display of a television and the convenience of the Internet and a video system, to permit people to talk to each other while viewing an image of each other. However, the equipment required in video conferencing is fairly expensive and therefore its use is generally limited to business purposes only.
In the co-pending, co-assigned application (System and Method for Dynamically Generating a Customized Menu Page), U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/703,959, which is explicitly incorporated by reference herein, it has been proposed to add a feature to a television so that a user can easily access information sources and services available on the Internet and other networks via a television set. Specifically, it has been proposed to provide a Menu Page Generator (server) coupled to a User Preference Server. The Menu Page Generator dynamically creates and presents a customized menu page to a user, for example on a television set display, in which various information sources and services that are likely to be of interest to the particular user are arranged in the form of clickable icons, for example. The information sources and services which are likely to be of interest are determined based on the user's predefined preferences and network access history, as stored and managed in the User Preference Server. For example, a customized menu page may include links to the Web sites that the user has frequently visited in the past and which therefore are likely to be of interest to the user, in the form of clickable icons, as well as other popular services such as SMS (ShortMessage Service) and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services that are also readily accessible to the user by clicking on their corresponding icons.
Thus, the customized menu page system, discussed above, has added a new function to a television set, to thereby permit users, who do not necessarily have computer-related skills, to more easily enjoy information and services that were once accessible only by those with such computer-related skills. However, there remains a need to add even further functions to a television set to continue improving the overall services available to the users, in particular to computer-novice users, through their non-PC client systems such as television sets.